An idle thought
03 December 2008
I figure there’s nothing like gross over-generalization to stir up some comment and debate. So here goes.
There are two things that most litigators should know how to do: fight and persuade.
Fighting is not the same as persuading. In fact, some things that are effective in a fight are ineffective, even counterproductive, when the task is to persuade.
There is a time to fight, and there is a time to persuade.
A major source of failure to persuade is the lawyer’s failure to recognize the difference between fighting and persuading, between what is effective in a fight and what is effective in persuading, between the time to fight and the time to persuade.
Comments?